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Adam Smith Quotes
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Adam Smith was a Scottish economist, philosopher and author as well as a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment era. Smith is best known for two classic works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations . The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics.

Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by fellow Scot, John Snell. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow teaching moral philosophy and during this time wrote and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In his later life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day.

Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory. The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, he developed the concept of division of labour and expounded upon how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by Tory writers in the moralising tradition of William Hogarth and Jonathan Swift. In 2005, The Wealth of Nations was named among the 100 Best Scottish Books of all time. The minor planet 12838 Adamsmith was named in his memory.

✵ 5. June 1723 – 17. July 1790
Adam Smith photo
Adam Smith: 175   quotes 6   likes

Adam Smith Quotes

“In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 80.

“It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII.

Age , Appearance

“It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part IV, Conclusion, p. 881.

Parting

“The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 845.

People , Education

“But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter III, Part V, p. 987.

“The man who employs either his labour or his stock in a grater variety of ways than his situation renders necessary, can never hurt his neighbour by underselling him. He may hurt himself, and he generally does so. Jack of all trades will never be rich, says the proverb. But the law ought always to trust people with the care of their own interest, as in their local situations they must generally be able to judge better of it than the legislator can do.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter V, Digression, p. 572.

People , Law , Way , Hurt

“The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the affect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 97.

Wealth

“But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 896.

Men

“Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section II, Chap. III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

Anger , Happiness

“When the act of navigation was made, though England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. … It is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity. They are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. National animosity at that particular time aimed at the very same object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended, the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England.”

Adam Smith

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

Wisdom , War , Time

“China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part III, (First Period) p. 221.

Parting , Country

“The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter V, paragraph 82.

Law , Nature , Effort , Freedom

“For in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter IV, p. 34.

World , Confidence , Country

“The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter III, p. 377.

“The great affair, we always find, is to get money.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 460.

Money

“When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter IX

Nature

“When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretend payment.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter III, Part V, p. 1012.

“Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter VII, Part Third, p. 684.

“IV. Every tax ought to be contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 893.

People

“How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew's-box, some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part IV

Money , People , Lovers , Time

“There seem, however, to be two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign, for the encouragement of domestic industry. The first is, when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country. The defence of Great Britain, for example, depends very much upon the number of its sailors and shipping. The act of navigation, therefore, very properly endeavours to give the sailors and shipping of Great Britain the monopoly of the trade of their own country, in some cases, by absolute prohibitions, and in others by heavy burdens upon the shipping of foreign countries.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

Dependency , Country

“With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part II, p. 202 (See also Thorstein Veblen).

People , Decision , Appearance , Parting

“There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. II.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part V

Soul , Country

“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section III, Chap. II.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

Universe , Time , Personality

“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VI, p. 60.

Love , Men , Nature , Country

“The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations of Europe. In the neighbourhood of Canton many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing boats upon the rivers and the canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 86.

People , Family , Food , Dogs

“It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 471.

Men , Money

“The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section II, Chap. II.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part VI

Beauty , Imagination , Game , Strong

“The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter VII, Part Second, p. 619.

Country

“It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interests has been so carefully attended to; and among this later class our merchants and manufactures have been by far the principal architects. In the mercantile regulations, which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it.”

Adam Smith

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter VIII, p. 721.

“The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter I, p. 7

Parting

“In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter III, Part II, p. 531.

Pain , People , Question , Sense

“III. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II Part II, p. 893.

Time

“To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 489.

People , Art , Home , Hurt

“The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter II, p. 17.

Education , Nature

“Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.”

Adam Smith

Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 2.
(1776)

Life , People , Time , Parting

“In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section II, Chap. III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part II

Support , Nature , Universe , Animals

“In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake; the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. VI.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part III

Life , Personality

“Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article III, p. 874.

“The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes.”

Adam Smith

Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 1.
(1776)

Life

“Oatmeal indeed supplies the common people of Scotland with the greatest and best part of their food, which is in general much inferior to that of their neighbours of the same rank in England.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 91 (Oatmeal in England makes for great horses, in Scotland Great Men).

People , Food , Parting

“The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 821.

People , Light , Loss

“To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter V, p. 584.

Justice , Law , Exercises , Idea

“For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article II, p. 847.

People , Education , Parting

“No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord. Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in his view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 486.

Nature , Study , Parting

“Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book III, Chapter II, p. 426-427.

Hurt

“The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VII, p. 69.

Nature

“I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities, that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 892.

Support

“The Hudson's Bay Company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had been much more fortunate than the Royal African Company.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 806.

War

“Lotteries are a tax on ignorance.”

Adam Smith

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